From SamuliS: Imperium's Finest (110 points)

Hi everyone!

Great to be back here painting with all off you! The Painting Challenge is definitely a massive motivation booster for me as it's always great to see the amazing stuff everyone is painting as well as having the friendly competition and also encouragement from everyone. By my counts this is my seventh challenge already, which seems to almost make me an old Grognard. I think I'd better start growing a proper beard then! That would also help with looking like a proper Viking to show my Scandinavian roots :)

Usually I've kicked off the challenge with a quick submission of a few 28mm minis in a bid to claim the coveted first spot at least for a fleeting moment. However this year round the company Christmas dinner kept me away from the brushes for the first few days so I decided to start with something a bit bigger.

I've been meaning to start playing Star Wars Legion for a while and when my local store had the starter box and some Wave 1 sets on sale on Black Friday I jumped on the opportunity. I'm planning to do a decent sized force for both sides to help in luring non-gaming friends in by having minis they can use as well, but decided to start with the Imperials. I've always kind of preferred the law and order instead of the dirty rebels with their secessionist terrorist tendencies.

As the minis are more or less monopose I set about doing some conversions so as not to have 3 identical units. Most were fairly simple hand swaps requiring just a bit of green stuff work. The Squad Leader and MG-42 (sorry DLT-19) gunners proved a bit more troublesome as they had special equipment. But some small alterations in their pose hopefully makes them at least a bit different from each other now.

In addition to being monopose I wasn't too happy about the quality of the minis. Detail is very soft and in some cases nonexistent. Hard to say if it's due to wear on the molds, but it's been the case with pretty much all the Wave 1 minis I've seen so probably just due to design. Seems a bit like a rip off with GW prices and quality worse than Reaper Bones. Hopefully the newer minis improve at least a bit.

Painting wise I went for a quick and dirty approach. Mostly because after seeing the quality I didn't feel like spending too much time on them. A light grey basecoat followed by pure white from the top with my airbrush. Then picking out the dark areas with a dark grey and lining the panel lines etc. with a light grey to make them a bit less monotone. And some chipping to break the surface. On Vader I put in a bit more effort with highlights and also trying my hand at OSL (Object Source Lighting). Turned out pretty nicely even if I say so myself. I'm still not 100% decided on if it's stark enough or not, but I'm leaving it like that for now.

Finally I based them for Endor as that's just the best setting from the original film series. And our club has a pretty amazing Endor table to fight over. Mostly just a collection of all kinds of random scatter as well as some ferns that I did from coffee filters dyed green and cut with some Green Stuff World cutters.

That's 22 28mm figures so should get me started with 110 points and my first entry for the Squirrel Side Duel!

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Welcome back Samuli! Seven Challenges, eh? Yes, I think you may need to grow some moustaches for your next time out to show your veteran status. :)

I love seeing Star Wars stuff getting some love. I almost sucummbed to Legion but I wasn't crazy about the scale and already have loads of stuff to do for 'Imperial Assault' (that reminds me... Squirrel!).

While the detail may be a bit soft on the stormtroopers (and what's up with that? The game is only a year old) you have done a terrific job on them. I like how you've weathered them up a bit and the Endor grounwork is excellent (only to be improved wit a couple of zapped Ewoks). This all being said, your Vader is the bees knees. That OSL effect is fantastic and you nailed the black-on-black shading. Very well done.

So, 110 points base and I'll give you a few more for the conversions. A great first entry for your Challenge.